7-7-7 speech development methodology

Opening:  How would you like to be able to create a great speech in 7 hours, that’s right, 7 hours!

You always have to develop speeches; here is a quick and easy way to do it.

Why 7 hours?

Winston Churchill followed a rule of thumb, 1 hour of preparation was needed for each minute of speech he was going to give.  Now following that rule of thumb, most of your speeches are 5-7 minutes, going to shoot to use all of that time, so take 7 hours to develop a 7 minute speech, and here is how you are going to do it:

1 hour of your time, and let your mind do the rest in the background.

Day 1	Think	Starts right after Toastmasters on Tuesday mornings, when you are motivated.  You are going to engage your brain and use that great instrument to do some multi-tasking in the background, as you go about your day.  Here is what you need to think about: v  - Topic:   Use this to define what you are going to talk about: Ø  Passion – a memory that you are passionate about: Ø  Passion – a life defining moment Ø  Passion – a life lesson learned v  Object of your speech – what do you want the listeners to get out of your speech.
Day 2	Outline	Write it down: v  Opening:  Ø  How will I get their attention v  Organization:  Ø  Start chronologically, list 3 items, list 5 items, etc. v  Conclusion: Ø  Making use of my objective that I have been thinking about for a day, what action item do I want they to take after hearing my speech
Day 3	Final organization	v  Review your organization: Ø  Add in quotes, Ø  Maybe determine mnemonics that will help your listeners more easily absorb your message v  Rewrite your outline, still not writing out all of your words
Day 4	Oral	Begin the oral practice of your speech.  You won’t be able to initially go all the way through your speech without stopping to want to add different content. v  Objective at this stage:  Ø  Are you getting the right message across?  Are you getting across the objective that you started out with Ø  Is it clear? Ø  By talking out loud, you will be able to hear this for yourself.  v  You will also get a rough idea of the timing of your speech, a mistake often made, you often go longer than you though. v  Add in quotes, perhaps mnemonics which will make it easier for your listeners to understand.  You want to start practicing early.
Day 5	Variety – vocal and had gestures	Begin your practice here, going all the way through your speech.  Practice in front of a mirror, I like to use the mirror closet doors in my bedroom so I can see what I am doing. Help you get a way from standing close to the lectern, or annoying habits, or are there any places where you can add in specific hand gestures that add to your speech.
Day 6	Review/ Front	Review in front of someone.  We often don’t do this because we feel not practiced enough, if you follow this methodology, you will be ready to show a well developed and practiced speech to someone that you will not be embarrassed to show them.  And you will get great and useful input from them. v  Think about their feedback and how you can incorporate it, where you can make improvements, put them in to your speech, v   practice it a couple of times and then show them again at the end of that hour.  v  Think about their last comments to you and how you can implement those changes; again let your mind do the work.
Day 7	Polish	Use the last day before your speech to polish up your presentation: In theory, in the course of 60 minutes, you can practice a 7 minute speech 8 times.  More realistically, with a little bit of thinking time in between, 6 times is a better number making any minor adjustments as you go along, with 3.5 minutes in between.  Time to drink some water, look at any possible minor tweaks. It may seem like a lot, but this is the time to make sure you are really going to hit your time frame

Conclusion:

7-days to a great speech:

-          you will see that the time from content development and oral practice is about split, you need to work on both of these areas to have a great speech

-          Trying to develop your speech at the last minute, trying to get all of this in to a very short time period, can also work, but we are not taking advantage of our brain and putting it to work for us, as much as we could.

Hand out by Emmy B. Gengler

Offering Rigorous Standards, Curriculum and Assessments

To fill workplace needs over the next two decades, California will need 1 million more college graduates than our education system is on track to produce. Sadly, our high school to college pipeline is broken, with too few students completing high school, enrolling in postsecondary institutions, and completing degrees. The leaks in this pipeline disproportionately hurt low-income students and students of color.

California’s high schools must dramatically increase not only the number of students who are earning diplomas, but also the number of students who graduate with meaningful preparation. This means ensuring that students have the skills, knowledge, and coursework necessary for college and career. And it means eliminating the systematic tracking that exacerbates differences among student subgroups: Low-income students and students of color receive less demanding coursework, limiting the scope of both their education and their future college and career options.

All California students should be well prepared for both college and the workforce.

California policymakers should take the following steps:

1. ESTABLISH COLLEGE-PREPARATORY GRADUATION STANDARDS.

California must strengthen its graduation requirements and align them with college-ready expectations. All students ought to graduate with the courses needed to enter California’s public universities. In 20 states across the country and the District of Columbia, students are already required to complete a college-preparatory curriculum to earn a diploma, in recognition that a rigorous course of study is necessary for both college and career. Until California’s default graduation requirements are strong enough to make a student eligible for the University of California (UC) and the California State University (CSU) systems, we must continue to expand access to the “A-G” course sequence required by our state’s public university systems.

2. ENSURE HIGH-QUALITY IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS.

Without a well-designed implementation plan, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are unlikely to lead to improvements in classroom instruction and educational outcomes. To ensure all students have access to and learn content aligned to the CCSS, the state must accelerate and expand its efforts to provide tools, resources, and professional development for educators. To this end, the state should take the following steps:

a. Review and adopt materials aligned to the CCSS with timelines to support implementation; make available to California educators online the best materials created by other states.

b. Provide guidance and support to districts as they transition to the new standards and redefine instructional priorities.

c. Ensure that all districts, especially those with the highest poverty, have the technology and know-how needed to administer new online “adaptive” assessments, which adjust up or down in difficulty in response to student answers.

d. Empower teachers and educators to use the assessments to track and improve student learning once new assessment data is available.

3. OFFER CAREER-READY OPPORTUNITIES THAT ARE FULLY INTEGRATED WITH A COLLEGE-READY COURSE OF STUDY.

The state must ensure that high school programs and curriculum focused on career preparation also equip students for college success. Linked Learning illustrates one approach that, when implemented well, joins strong academics, demanding technical education, work-based learning, and student supports. In expanding and implementing college and career-preparation programs, the state must ensure that districts and schools have incentives to offer equitable access to this coursework and are held accountable for equitable outcomes, including high school graduation and A-G rates.

4. COLLECT AND USE DATA TO INFORM DECISION-MAKING.

California must continue to fund, develop, and implement the state’s student data system (CALPADS) so that all stakeholders have the data they need to evaluate and support student learning and system improvement. A system that tracks individual student progress from early childhood through the K–12 system, into postsecondary education, and then into the workforce, will allow the state to determine which programs yield the most results. Further, such a system will help educators work with parents to support each student’s progress.

Read more >>

Advancing Educational Equity & Excellence in California

This year, 2012, promises to be a pivotal one for California’s students. From Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to reform our education finance system, to competing ballot initiatives to raise more funds for schools, to efforts to change the school accountability system, our elected officials will grapple with a host of high-stakes decisions with long-term impact. At risk is our state’s economic future. To meet the demands of our economy, California will need one million more college graduates by 2025 than our education system is on track to produce. We cannot achieve this target without dramatically expanding college and career opportunities for the students of color and low-income students who are the overwhelming majority in California’s classrooms. As state leaders make critical choices about the future of our education system, they must correct the inequities that have led to unacceptable gaps in opportunity and achievement. Children facing poverty need additional resources to catch up to their more affluent peers. Yet, evidence shows that rather than providing high-need students with extra resources, California provides them with less of everything that matters. Low-income students and students of color are less likely to be taught by the best trained, most effective teachers than their more advantaged peers. High-poverty school districts receive fewer dollars than more affluent communities, even though it costs more to educate students who start off behind and have greater educational needs. Low-income, African-American, and Latino students are less likely to have access to rigorous, college-ready coursework while in high school, and therefore less likely to succeed in higher education. As the state legislative cycle proceeds, please take a moment to read our updated Policy Agenda, Advancing Educational Equity and Excellence in California. There you will find our most current recommendations for the fundamental changes necessary to close achievement gaps and ensure all of our students succeed in college, career and life. Read more >>

The Future Retail Wasteland

The Future Retail Wasteland By Brad Stone and David Welch on April 12, 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek Brian Dunn was practically ebullient. “The one critical thing we offer the world is choice,” the Best Buy (BBY) chief executive officer said in a March phone interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. He was trumpeting in particular his company’s role in guiding customers through the expanding smartphone universe. “We provide the latest and greatest choice of all technology gear, from Apple (AAPL) products to Google (GOOG) products, and that brings more opportunity to help people put technology to use. That is a great place for us to be.” A week later, reality intruded. The consumer electronics retailer posted a $1.7 billion quarterly loss and announced it would close 50 stores nationwide. On April 10, Dunn resigned. Best Buy cited an unspecified “personal conduct” issue as the reason for Dunn’s abrupt departure, though the larger troubles plaguing the company haven’t changed. Founded in 1966 in St. Paul, Minn., Best Buy has watched its business stagnate because of a mix of macroeconomic forces and shifts in consumer behavior that essentially boil down to that one word Dunn bragged about as an advantage: choice. Shoppers are finding more choices online—primarily at Amazon.com (AMZN)—where they can often find a better deal. At the same time choice has narrowed in product categories such as HDTVs and PCs. There’s hardly a reason anymore to line up various models in a showroom. Best Buy’s decline reflects a cultural shift that’s reshaping the retail world. All big-box stores, and Best Buy in particular, thrived in an era when comparison shopping meant physically going from store to store. The effort required of consumers was a kind of transactional friction. With the advent of mobile technology, friction has all but disappeared. Rather than ruminate with a salesperson before making a selection, tech-savvy consumers are more likely to walk into stores, eyeball products, scan barcodes with their smartphones, note cheaper prices online, and head for the exit. Shoppers can purchase virtually any product under the sun on Amazon or EBay (EBAY) while sipping a latte at Starbucks (SBUX). For traditional retailers, that spells trouble, if not death. “So far nothing Best Buy is doing is fast enough or significant enough to get in front of these waves,” says Scot Wingo, CEO of e-commerce consulting firm ChannelAdvisor.
 Read more >>

7-Minute Solution: Speak Easy

7-Minute Solution: Speak Easy

Who hasn’t stumbled through a ¬presentation or flubbed a key point when the boss was listening? Overcome your public speaking jitters with these tips from top communication coach Bill Hoogterp of Blue Planet Training.

1. Make every word count. Avoid saying anything that doesn’t add ¬value (“um” is a prime example); don’t use three sentences when one will do. By eliminating the verbal filler, you’ll have people hanging on your words instead of tuning them out.

2. Set the tone at the start. Instead of beginning with the standard “Hi, my name is,” grab your listeners’ attention with a scene or a question. Choose a story that captures an important message and practice telling it with emotion and fluid body language.

3. Speak with confidence. If you doubt yourself, your audience will, too. Stand up straight, establish eye ¬contact—and smile.

4. Get the crowd in on the act. Make your listeners the stars and you will shine more brightly. Ask them questions that require more than yes-or-no answers. You’ll enrich the discussion, and they will feel valued.

5. Conquer stage fright. When you tell compelling stories with passion, your ¬anxiety will turn into energy

Get more tips at >>

Ohlone’s STEM College for a Day Slide show

Ohlone’s STEM College for a Day Builds Education in the Sciences

Ohlone’s STEM Awareness Day Builds Education in the Sciences Fremont, CA—Hoping to spark greater interest in the sciences, especially among high school students from underrepresented populations, Ohlone College hosts the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Awareness Day at the Ohlone College Newark Campus. Each year a different high school is selected to participate in the annual event. This year 50 students from Newark Memorial High School students will attend. Students are placed into teams of twelve, and participate in a variety of hands-on activity sessions in the fields of Chemistry, Engineering, Biotechnology and Information Technology. Students receive a certificate of attendance and compete to win prizes and get to take their projects home with them. The goal of STEM Awareness day is to inspire the students to explore Ohlone College’s STEM Pathway Program. The STEM College Prep Curricular Pathway program at Ohlone College prepares both middle school and high school students for entry into one of the STEM pre-baccalaureate degree programs offered at Ohlone College. The program gives students the opportunity to take courses in high school while receiving college credits, many of which will transfer for credit at both California State University and the University of California systems. Students generally begin the STEM prep program in their sophomore year of high school, taking science classes such as Biotechnology, Biochemistry and a class that prepares them for successful studying for college courses. The students enrolled in the STEM program receive supplemental instruction from teacher aides, take tours of industry companies, and are offered mentorship opportunities with professionals in the biotechnology field. Once students graduate from high school they are better prepared to enter a college level degree program in the sciences. They may choose to continue their studies at Ohlone College for one additional year and earn a Certificate in Biotechnology. From there they can enter the workforce, or to continue their studies earning higher-level degrees. Read more >>

Brad Howard, Past District Governor of Rotary District 5170, keynote address

Brad Howard Keynote Address from Andy Mills on Vimeo.

Weight loss study: Fads not as helpful as exercising, eating less

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who are obese try to lose weight, and about 40% of them actually succeed. How did they do it? The old-school way: By eating less, exercising more and switching to more healthful foods, according to a new study. That’s not to say that the appeal of fad diets, pre-made diet foods and over-the-counter pills escaped these dieters. But none of these strategies worked. “Liquid diets, nonprescription diet pills and popular diets showed no association with successful weight loss,” according to a study published online Tuesday by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston looked at data collected as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. Study participants get physical examinations and answer detailed questions about their health and diets. Between 2001 and 2006, the researchers identified 4,021 adults who had been obese for at least a year before participating in the survey. Among them, 2,523 – or 63% – said they had tried to lose weight in the previous 12 months. And among them, 1,026 – or 41% – were able to shed at least 5% of their body weight, a feat that may sound trivial but has been shown to improve health in previous studies. Even better, 510 people – or 20% – succeeded in losing at least 10% of their body weight, which is what the National Institutes of Health recommends. Here’s what the dieters tried that worked: * 65% ate less food * 44% ate less fat * 41% switched to foods with fewer calories * 4% took weight-loss medications that were prescribed by a doctor Here’s what the dieters tried that didn’t work: * 41% drank more water * 14% ate “diet foods or products” * 10% used nonprescription diet pills, including herbal remedies * 7% adopted a “liquid-diet formula.” Among the dieters who lost at least 10% of their body fat, joining a weight loss program was helpful too. The researchers speculate that “the structure of being in a program” was useful in and of itself, even though many such programs involve eating specially prepared foods (a strategy that, on its own, did not help obese people in this study). To those dieters out there eager to believe that there’s a shortcut by which they can slim down with less pain and less sacrifice, the study authors essentially said, “Forget it.” You can read the study online here. Return to the Booster Shots blog. By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots blog April 10, 2012, 1:52 p.m. Read more >>

Demystifying math could ease anxiety

Demystifying math could ease anxiety By Erin Allday, San Francisco Chronicle Human beings have all kinds of irrational fears and anxieties about everyday objects and situations: spiders and snakes, heights and enclosed spaces, airplanes and needles. Math. That last one, in fact, may be very common, just going by the number of adults who freely admit to hating math or being bad at it. That supposed dislike of math, scientists say, may be disguising a real phobia that probably begins at an early age. Stanford researchers studying math anxiety in second- and third-grade students found that kids who were stressed about math had brain activity patterns similar to people with other phobias. When the children were faced with a simple addition problem, the parts of their brain that feel stress lit up - and the parts that are good at doing math deactivated. Interestingly, the children with math anxiety weren't actually bad at math - they got about the same number of answers right as their anxiety-free peers - but it took them more time to solve the problems. The good news, researchers say, is that phobias are treatable, which means there may be a way to cure kids' anxiety before they develop a lifelong aversion to math. "We already have mechanisms that are widely used to treat these other phobias. If the same brain system is involved with math anxiety, you should be able to use those mechanisms," said Vinod Menon, a professor of neurology and psychiatry who led the Stanford study. "What the math field might want to think about is doing this at earlier ages. Once math becomes a strongly learned fear, then it's much more difficult to treat." Anxiety becomes avoidance Math anxiety has been recognized among teachers and mental health experts for decades, although it's not typically a clinical diagnosis made by psychiatrists or psychologists. Math anxiety is rarely debilitating enough to require treatment - people who feel anxious about math probably just avoid it as best they can, researchers say. Adults who breezily claim to be bad at math may have had an early math phobia, and schoolchildren who chatter through math class or doodle on their math homework may be covering up their anxiety, said Kirstin Hernandez, a mathematics program administrator for the San Francisco Unified School District. But avoidance isn't the most productive way to deal with math anxiety, and many people who feel anxious and, in turn, try to keep math out of their lives may be hurting themselves in the long run, researchers said. Without even a basic understanding of math, they might not know how to find the best mortgage rate or calculate the tip on a restaurant bill. "Math has been for a long time seen as an 'elite' field. It's very OK to be at a cocktail party and tell people you're not good at math," Hernandez said. "But as an adult, I'm looking for a car loan, a home loan, I'm thinking about interest rates, percentages - that is not more than seventh-grade mathematics." In the Stanford study, published last month, 46 children were interviewed to determine their level of math anxiety. Then they were given functional MRI scans, which monitor brain activity, while answering simple addition and subtraction questions. Children who had high math anxiety also had increased activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain associated with stress and negative emotions. These same children had decreased activity in parts of the brain associated with math reasoning and problem solving. "They're investing more resources in the fear part than the calculation part of the brain. But the kids have come up with another way to get the correct answer, even though it makes them nervous," said Dr. Steve Hamilton, an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF. The results weren't necessarily surprising, Menon said, but he was interested to find that math anxiety had obvious effects on the brain even at a very young age. Mental health experts who saw the results noted that there's no doubt that math anxiety seems to cause the same brain activity patterns as other types of anxiety and phobias. That means math anxiety may be easily treated with techniques like exposure to the source of fear and cognitive behavioral therapy that work on other phobias. Kids and adults with math anxiety could learn to be less stressed by becoming more comfortable with numbers and equations, and by adjusting their thought process when they're faced with a math problem. Those are techniques that could be easily introduced in schools, Hamilton said. But many schools already focus on preventing anxiety in the first place by making it relevant and less intimidating. Teach reasoning No one knows for sure what prompts math anxiety - in fact, scientists don't fully understand what causes any human phobia - but the way math has been taught for years probably doesn't help, say scientists and teachers alike. Children are often instructed to remember processes and equations without a firm understanding of why those equations work, Hernandez said. "Human beings are born with numerical reasoning - if you want kids to split a piece of cake or pizza in half, they know how to do it," she said. "Sometimes when we over-standardize how to do math and take the reasoning out of it, it becomes confusing." The answer, say many teachers and mathematicians, is to demystify math. "You're forced to do something over and over again and you know nothing about it - wouldn't you be anxious too?" said Hung-Hsi Wu, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus in mathematics who has written a book about teaching math to elementary school students. "I believe almost all math anxiety would be gone," Wu said, "if every one of our teachers in elementary school was capable of looking in the 'black box' of mathematics and telling kids there is no mystery, this is why it works." Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. eallday@sfchronicle.com This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 2012 Read more >>

Spring 2012 Ohlone College Student Fine Art and Design Show

If you want to help the environment, eat less red meat

Earth Day is right around the corner, and many of us will be thinking about what we can do to curb our environmental impact. Taking shorter showers, installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, reusing and recycling are all great ways to take individual action. But there's another way we can all do our part and it starts with a knife and a fork -- reduce our meat consumption.

Last month, the United Nations celebrated World Water Day with the goal of recognizing global water and food scarcity issues and educating people about ways we can take personal responsibility. According to the U.N., it takes 10 times more water to produce beef than wheat.

"Producing feed crops for livestock, slaughtering and the processing of meat, milk and other dairy products ... require large quantities of water," it said. "This makes the water footprint of animal products particularly important."

The U.N.'s advice? Eat less or no meat.

An estimated 10 billion land animals are factory farmed and slaughtered every year for food in the U.S. In addition to being a huge water user, animal agriculture is also one of the largest contributors to climate change.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, animal agriculture is responsible for nearly one-fifth of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, industrial animal agribusiness has huge implications on the animals themselves.

By and large, the meat, eggs and dairy produced in the U.S. come from stock packed inside concentrated animal feeding operations, where they're often crammed in cages to so tightly they're unable to move.

Tens of millions of mother pigs, for example, are confined in individual cages barely larger than their own bodies, preventing them from turning around for months on end.

Factory farmed animals' lives are wrought with suffering and bear no resemblance to the way most of us envision life on Old MacDonald's farm.

Our meat-centric diet has had dire consequences for our health, too. Study after study shows that eating meat, eggs and dairy is consistently linked to heart disease, cancer, stroke and a host of other chronic illnesses that are plaguing our society.

To the contrary, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and whole grains leads to lower rates of obesity, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

For further proof, look no further than former President Bill Clinton, who went on a mostly vegan diet after undergoing quadruple bypass surgery.

"I lost 24 pounds and I got back to basically what I weighed in high school. ... I didn't dream this would happen," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

By choosing meat-, egg- and dairy-free options, even by just a few meals a week, we can improve our health, decrease our environmental footprint and help prevent a tremendous amount of animal suffering.

For these reasons, a group of Oakland residents -- including Mayor Jean Quan, Councilwoman Nancy Nadel, Alameda County Supervisors Keith Carson and Wilma Chan, and Rep. Barbara Lee are all pledging to be vegetarian for Oakland Veg Week, April 15-21.

As a community, we can make a difference for our health, animals and the environment every time we sit down to eat.

Kristie Middleton lives in Adam's Point and is a coordinator of Oakland Veg Week. For more information, visit www.OaklandVeg.com

By Kristie Middleton
My Word, Oakland Tribune
Copyright 2011, Bay Area News Group

Posted:   04/02/2012 04:00:00 PM PDT